People communicate with each other in an online environment by sending and receiving messages. One area in which large numbers of messages are involved is in social networking. Social networking systems allow users to form relationships with other users, applications, events, and many other objects. Users can then communicate with other users in the social network by sending messages such as electronic mail (“email”) and web-chat messages. When large numbers of messages are involved, whether it be in a social networking system or otherwise, it is easy for a user to become overwhelmed with a constant stream of incoming messages. Thus, it has become a challenge to organize and present messages to users in a manner that is both efficient and user-friendly.